


Another kiss

by rosa_himmelblau



Series: The Roadhouse Blues [28]
Category: Wiseguy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-24
Updated: 2020-08-24
Packaged: 2021-03-06 14:48:23
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,047
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26090638
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rosa_himmelblau/pseuds/rosa_himmelblau
Summary: Old dead friends come out of the woodwork.
Series: The Roadhouse Blues [28]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1069713





	Another kiss

Vinnie had been lying on the sofa, trying to wait out a hang-over, when the doorbell rang, startling him fully awake. He wasn't expecting anyone—who would he be expecting?—and Sonny was away. He peered cautiously through the peep-hole and found himself staring, flummoxed. The bell rang again, several impatient times, then Roger knocked on the door just below where Vinnie was looking out. "C'm'on, Vince. I know you're in there, and I know you can see me. Now let me in."

Vince. Nobody called him that anymore. In private, Sonny called him Vinnie. In public, they had other names. He didn't mind it so much—it was like being undercover, sort of—but he knew Sonny hated it, wouldn't call him by name unless backed against a wall. Those names were impersonal things, without connection to either of their pasts, like borrowed clothes that didn't fit, but which couldn't be returned. Vince opened the door. "Get in here," he ordered.

Roger looked startled. By his tone, his appearance, by the fact of him there, alive? At that moment Vince didn't care, as long as he came inside quickly and none of the neighbors heard him calling Vince by this name.

If Roger was pleased to see him, he didn't show it. He didn't even look at Vince; his eyes scanned the room, taking in everything. He sauntered inside, shutting the door behind him, and set down the small suitcase he carried.

"You wanna sit down, or did you come to appraise the place?" Vince asked.

Finally Roger really looked at him. Vince knew what he saw—too fat, too tired, edging up on too old.

"How're you doing?" The words were so gentle they frightened Vince away from answering too deeply.

"OK, Rog. How'd you find me?"

Roger shrugged. "It wasn't hard, just time-consuming. I'd been looking ever since McPike called to tell me you'd disappeared. By the time McPike got word to me your guys were counting you among the dead, I knew from my sources that you weren't, so I just kept looking."

Roger had been looking for him. There was warm comfort in that concern, even if it was posthumous.

"I never expected **this**." Roger had moved to one of the windows, was looking out at the magnificent view. "Great view, if you don't mind an orange bridge."

"Where'd you think I'd be living, a Salvation Army shelter?" Vince sat back down on the too-fucking-expensive sofa Sonny had insisted on buying when the old one had proved inadequate for anything more than sitting side-by-side, watching TV on a Sunday afternoon. This one was practically a room unto itself, but neither of them ever fell off, no matter what they did on it.

Roger was still casing the place. "This what it was like back in the old days?"

So he knew. Not that Vince was surprised. Roger knew how to find things out.

"Pretty much." It wasn't, really; this apartment hadn't been furnished by an interior decorator, but by the inhabitant himself, whose taste sometimes went awry when it was a choice between tasteful and expensive. But why should Vince care? He'd never thought much about décor, it wasn't his money, and he and Sonny could always find more than enough things to argue about, when the mood struck. Vince didn't need to go looking for topics of dispute.

"Vince. What the hell is going on?"

Vince rubbed his eyes, then looked around the room. "Not much. We're the only ones here."

Something showed on Roger's face then—annoyance? Very possibly. Roger just kept looking at him, waiting for him to answer. Finally he repeated himself. "Vince. What's going on?"

Vince shrugged. "You tracked me down. Don't you know?"

Roger sighed and sat down across from him. "Does McPike know about this?"

_Frank._ Vince's chest hurt, and his throat tightened. He thought about offering Roger a beer, but that was pretty transparent. "You said Frank told you I was dead."

"I said he said your guys were saying you were dead," Roger spelled out the obvious. "And while your Frank's heart may be pure, he can prevaricate with the best of them. Does he know or not?"

Yeah, Frank would lie to Roger for him. Frank would lie to God for him, should the need arise, straight-faced and calm-voiced, along with breaking any other Commandments that might need breaking. "Rudy said he'd told him I was dead." Did he believe it? That was another question entirely, a horse of a different color. There had been no body to show him. Would Frank ever believe it, without that? No, not Frank. Frank was no doubting Thomas; Frank's disbelief came from the other end of the spectrum; he would doubt the reality of Vince's death because he believed so strongly in his life. _Doubt's always the flip side of faith, isn't it? Where's Pete when I need someone to sigh at my philosophical meanderings? Dead. I saw his body, put my fingers in the wounds—_

Roger was talking again. "What are you doing here?"

"Where should I be?" Vince shot back. He was getting tired of these questions with their moral baggage dragging behind them.

"C'm'on, Vince. How'd you end up with Steelgrave? For that matter, what's he doing still alive? Is there some big computer dating service for dead people that I just never heard about, or what?" And with that terrifying gentleness that made Vince feel too fragile to speak, "Is this where you want to be?"

How to explain? Sonny wasn't his first choice, or his second; Sonny wasn't a choice at all, he was a ghost, but he kept Vinnie Terranova alive. Without Sonny Steelgrave, Vinnie Terranova would be gone now, sailed away like a ship with no crew; the face he looked at in his mirror would belong to the guy whose name was on his driver's license, whoever he was. Whether it was a good thing or a bad one, Vinnie couldn't decide. It seemed like a good one when the sun was up, and Sonny was there, when they were cruising around in Sonny's convertible, or eating at some new place Sonny'd found. Nighttime was different; when it got late, and he couldn't sleep, he wondered about Frank, thought about calling him. He couldn't, though, not even just to hear his voice and hang up. Frank would trace the call, would fly to wherever it led. Of course it could be a wrong number, there were such things as wrong numbers, but not in Frank's universe, not now with him MIA. Frank would never stop looking . . . . Funny, wasn't it, that after all those years of Frank trying to make Vinnie forget Sonny, it was Sonny who kept him remembering Frank?

"Yeah, Rog, it's where I want to be."

Roger didn't look convinced. That didn't surprise Vince; he wasn't convinced himself. "You're sure?"

Vince shrugged. "You asking me to come with you?"

Roger grinned, shaking his head. "You've got to admit, your position is unique. How many other people have a selection of dead friends to choose from?"

And Vince laughed. "You planning on staying?" He motioned to the suitcase. Not that Roger could stay; he couldn't even imagine explaining this to Sonny. He'd let Sonny believe he was the only one; he wasn't going to mess that up now. But there was a part of him that longed to have Roger there, just for dinner, just to be sure—

His mind skittered off the thought, but he forced himself back to it. Too often this whole thing felt hallucinatory. Even after two years Vince sometimes wondered if he was really back in that cell, hands over his ears to blot out the screams, talking to Sonny because—

Why **had** it been Sonny he'd chosen during his captivity? Vince wasn't sure. Maybe because Sonny's presence was the most plausible—the dead could be anywhere, right? Frank couldn't come walking through the wall of the cell, but Sonny could. Now he'd love for Roger to see Sonny, to talk to him; that might make him real, might make Vince one hundred percent, without a doubt **sure** that Sonny really was there. Roger would be proof . . . .

Roger had gotten up, brought back the suitcase and opened it. Inside was the duffel bag of money Vince had stashed in the back of his closet. "You must've been in quite a hurry to elope; you forgot something in your haste to take up your new life."

He had indeed. It had completely slipped his mind that he'd left behind a small fortune in Brooklyn. Not that he was exactly a pauper; Sonny was always handing him cash the way you'd hand a kid candy, and once things had been put right with Rudy, he'd sent quite a nice bankroll too, a little mad-money, just in case. People were always giving him money "just in case." He must be putting out some sort of vibe. "Thanks." When he got home, Sonny would want to know where the money came from. _From my past_ was not an answer Sonny would understand. He'd want to know if it was **his** money, skimmed in days gone by—if Frank had thought it was, how could Sonny **not**? And it wouldn't matter that those days were long gone, it would still piss him off, another hash mark in the betrayal column in Vinnie's ledger. He'd want to know what kind of "friend" gives away that kind of money, and what Vinnie had done to get it. And what would Vinnie say? "I had this friend, and he gave me this money to hold and I thought he was dead . . . ." How many not-really-dead friends **could** one person plausibly have? One was pushing it. "You were the only one who knew it was there, though Frank suspected I had more than what I gave him."

"What would happen if I stayed? Just for dinner?" Roger asked, reading his mind.

"I don't know," Vince lied. He knew very well—he'd spend the rest of his life explaining who Roger was, as Roger displaced Frank and became ever more forcefully a concrete symbol of Sonny's insecurities. It wasn't jealousy exactly, it was—it was just another lie Vinnie had told Sonny, that Roger was dead, and even though Sonny might understand, even though it might not be the lie that broke the camel's back, did Vinnie want to risk everything on those mights? It wasn't that he couldn't handle arguing with Sonny—God knew!—but, like arguing about the furniture, he could think of better uses for his energy than reassuring Sonny that Roger was just a friend. And not a friend who sometimes stuck his hand in Vinnie's pants. And that was assuming Sonny was still there to argue with, that he hadn't decided once and for all that Vinnie couldn't be trusted. "Why do you want to?"

"Why, Vince, is that any way to talk to an old friend?"

"Depends if the old friend's here because he's concerned or because he's bored and wants to stir things up and then leave me here to straighten out the mess. I'll let you stay if you're really worried."

"I'd be less worried if you'd weren't evading my question."

"What is the question? Why am I here? Where else should I be?"

"How about, are you happy?"

Vince didn't say anything. He knew it wasn't a good sign that he didn't know the answer.

"Skip it. Right now you're so depressed, you don't look like you'd know happiness if it ran up and bit you on the ass."

"No kidding. What was your first clue?"

"So forget that question. Let's try, are you happy with Steelgrave?"

"You can say the words, Roger, you won't catch it." But Vince didn't say it either.

Roger rolled his eyes. "So what's your answer?"

Vince sighed. Things were so much clearer when Sonny was there; his torpor couldn't withstand Sonny's energy, and he knew just how he felt and why, when Sonny was there. And if he didn't, Sonny told him.

"Not very promising," Roger said in reply to his silence.

"Let's go out," Vince said, standing up. "I need some cigarettes." If he wasn't going to have a beer, a cigarette, or ten, would have to do.

It was cool out, and damp, but instead of going back to the apartment, Vince walked over to a small park not far from the drugstore where he'd bought his cigarettes. The fresh air was nice, and being outside seemed to sharpen his brain. He had meant to get up when Sonny did that morning, go down and work on his car, but instead he'd slept late and had a breakfast of graham crackers on the sofa, falling into a kind of hung-over trance.

He sat down on a picnic table and Roger sat next to him. Vince lit a cigarette, took a deep drag. "You'd think a year without these would've killed the habit, but the first damn thing I did when I could fend for myself was buy a pack." Roger didn't say anything.

"Eight months they kept me underground, in some kind of cell. I was lucky—everyone says I was lucky, and I know it's true, but Rog . . . I don't feel very lucky. Eight months isn't very long when you're looking back on it, but when it's eight-months-going-on-forever, when you don't even know it's eight months because you can't count the days or nights, when there's no end in sight—" Vince stopped himself. He was over the edge of the pit, but he could still turn back, had to turn back, not only because he was sure he knew what Roger's views on self-pity would be, but because later there would be Sonny, wanting to know what had started the spiral **this** time.

"Somewhere, someone along the line decided I might be worth some money. Some entrepreneur looking out for himself. And nobody pays as well for damaged merchandise. So they stashed me in a cell, fed me every couple of days, and that was it. I never saw anybody else, and the guys who fed me didn't talk to me—they must'a been under strict orders, they didn't even talk to each other while they were there. It was like a shunning; the only other voices I ever heard were guys screaming, it echoed off the walls. It was just me, alone in a dark cell.

"Of course, I didn't know what they had in mind, so I was afraid. Not all the time, exactly; at first I was relieved they'd come, and feed me, or hose me off, and leave. But after a while, the loneliness set it. Too much time to think about things that didn't bear thinking about.

"I tried praying. I tried counting my blessings; I tried counting sheep. I bargained with God—I'd've bargained with the devil, if I'd known how to get a hold of him. I cried, and I worried about my mother, and Frank . . . I wondered why you didn't find me and bring me home. You've got curses on your heads, all'a you. And somewhere in all of that, I started thinking about Sonny. About why he never caught on to me. I started wishing they **would** come and take me to wherever all that screaming was coming from; somebody had to be saying something to those guys, right, talking to 'em? If they'd taken me, and asked me questions, I'd've answered them.

"Then I got sick and nothing was real anymore. I don't remember Rudy's guys coming for me." _It's a shame they were too late._ The thought came, even though he'd learned to stop saying things like that; they just pissed Sonny off, and he was pretty sure Roger would be no different. "When Rudy put me in the clinic, I thought I was in heaven, it was all very bright and clean and God was very well-organized. And I kept having these hallucinations that Sonny was there."

Vinnie examined one wrist. The scars had faded pretty well already. "You want to know why I'm with Sonny, if I'm happy."

"That's the sixty-four-thousand dollar question, Buckwheat."

Vince looked away from him, off into the distance. He hated the ugly words in his head, in his heart, the words he'd never said in all these years. He'd lied to himself and everyone else who'd come asking, to the point where he'd thought he didn't have to believe the truth, that it would go away—until all that remained was the guilt that had nearly killed him. He didn't want to say those words now, but thinking of Roger telling him about Preet made it easier—a little easier. "Yeah, I do love Sonny. I always did. It's real easy for me to love him, but that's not why I'm with him." Roger was being ungodly patient, far more patient that Vince would have expected. "The truth is, I'm with Sonny because he loves me. He always has, right from the beginning. I saw it, and I exploited it to make my case, just like they taught me. But more importantly, I liked it. It was what kept me up nights, and what had me thinking about chucking the OCB and staying with him. Being the focus of that kind of love's more than seductive, it's addictive. I didn't want to give it up, and I hated myself for betraying it, for needing it so bad, for succumbing to it.

"When Rudy told him how sick I was, Sonny came for me."

"Frank would have done the same," Roger said.

Vince watched the smoke escaping from his cigarette. "Sure he would. No question about it. I'm his responsibility—"

"That's not it," Roger objected.

"Yeah? 'You're my responsibility, Vince.' You know how many times I've heard that?" Vince sighed. "Yeah, I know, it's just Frank for 'I love you.' And if I called him now, he'd be thrilled, he'd be here on the first plane he could flag down. But then what? Huh? You know what it's like, being somebody's responsibility, day in and day out? He couldn't abandon me if he wanted to. Not that I think he wants to," Vince forestalled. "But what about Drake? He can't abandon him, either. He's got this life, you know? I know this way's bad, Rog, but the other way's worse."

"Gimme one'a those." Roger grabbed the cigarettes off the table between them and accepted the light Vince offered. "So that's why you're here? Self-sacrifice, the greater good, and all that?"

"No." Vince watched the smoke some more. He'd told Sonny once that was the appeal of smoking; you could just sit and watch the smoke for hours, if you wanted, watch pack after pack just disappear. Sonny's response had been unrepeatable in polite company, as Vinnie had known it would be, something about burning money being just as much fun. Roger would have been amused by that same explanation, and Frank . . . Frank was hard to predict, he could be annoyed or amused, and sometimes both at the same time, depending on the time of day and what he'd had for breakfast. It was just one more example of something Vince had known for some time—that there was no one in his life he couldn't perplex or infuriate, just by telling, without comment, the truth. His cigarette had burned down. Vince flicked it away and lit another. "I can't figure out what you want, Rog. You're worried I'm not happy, but it annoys you I'm not crying over Frank. Well, believe me, it eats away at me, wondering if Frank is all right, if he's putting himself at risk, looking for me. I hate that. And I hate that it's so easy to be with Sonny, that I can be happy while Frank— I can't help it! I've got people want me dead, I can't just go back and wait for them to come after me, I know I'm a coward, but I can't do it. How is he?"

"Frank? Frank is much less angry than when he first contacted me."

Frank's anger. Vince loved Frank's anger, it was a saving grace, a benediction, a love that rocked him to sleep—with a real rock, Frank's voice contributed the punch line. "You know what would happen if I contacted him," Vince said, his voice low, as if they were conspiring to do just that. "He'd never let me go. He'd throw away everything for me, and there's no need. And all because he wouldn't believe Sonny really loves me. Is he happy?"

"I don't think Frank could recognize happiness either, not in a line-up, wearing a 'Hi, my name is: Happiness' tag, but then, I never did. He seems to be adjusted. Do you want to come with **me**?" The offer was off-hand, but it was serious.

"You know, I always figured that money was so you'd never have to ask me that question."

"Doesn't mean you can't come with me. If it's what you really want. That's what the money's really for—so you have a choice."

"So I go with you. We ride off into the sunset together, just you and me, Butch. How does that help Frank's sleepless nights?"

Roger favored him with a smile. "Good. Now you're thinking, anyway."

Life with Roger—his freedom would be delirious, his safety absolute. He'd be dead in a year, frozen and scalded both. "Thanks, Rog, but no thanks. I'll stick with Sonny." Roger didn't say anything and his original question hung in the air. _Do I love Sonny? Or am I staying out of guilt? If life with Roger would be frigid, with intermittent firestorms, life with Sonny's an inferno that occasionally cools down so I can breathe. On the other hand, in the dark, when Sonny's holding me down, kissing me half to death, breathing seems so over-rated._

"So, come on, Buckwheat, pony up. What's it like, living the life of Steelgrave's _inamorato_?"

Vinnie smiled, thinking that if he told Roger, Roger wouldn't believe him. But what difference did it make whether Roger believed him or not? "What can I tell you, the girls he brings home all speak English."

Roger's look was priceless. "What?"

"Sonny favors stewardesses. And he's very generous."

"And you don't find it a little stuffy, sharing that closet?" Before he could say anything, Roger went on, "Because I've seen you together, Vince, and nobody in their right mind would believe you were **just friends**."

Vinnie could have explained, a little, anyway. But it somehow seemed wrong to expose Sonny like that. "No, we're not just friends, it's more than that. I dunno. You bring along a Kinsey questionnaire for me to fill out?" Roger shook his head. "How do you self-identify, Buckwheat? Because I seem to recall several hours'—maybe even days'—worth of activities that wouldn't fly on the straight-and-narrow path."

"Yeah, yeah, but that's not the question." Roger, amazingly, might've been blushing. Vinnie smiled at him.

"You want me to tell you Sonny's the bluebird of happiness? He's not. He's—" Vince sighed. _How do you explain Sonny to someone who's never met him? I'm not sure it can be done._ "I love him. You want a poem about it, go talk to Hallmark."

Roger seemed to accept that. "You got a good hiding place for that money?"

"Safety deposit box with Rudy's money in it. Sonny knows about it, he won't be suspicious. I'll hit the bank this afternoon."

"Good deal. Are you gonna be OK?"

"Yeah, Rog, I'm gonna be OK. And I still got your number." Vinnie got up, picked up his cigarettes, put them in his pocket. "Gimme a call next time you're in town," he called over his shoulder.

It felt anti-climactic, like something was missing—something profound said, some final farewell, maybe a boat explosion. Or maybe as Vinnie walked away he should have turned back for one last look and seen not Roger, but only the smoke from Roger's cigarette lingering in the air. But Vinnie didn't turn back, so if Roger disappeared in a puff of smoke, he didn't see it.


End file.
